Lunar Song
by lightofhislife
Summary: Luna watches the mooncalves dance so she can collect fertilizer for the dirigible plumbs.


**DISCLAIMER: Not my characters.**

The moon outside shined down on the girl with kaleidoscope eyes with a silver crown of light.

"I wonder if the moon and sun have chanced to meet one another," she pondered aloud. "If they have, I suppose it would be very sad if they fell in love. Then the moon may have had to settle with a star that shined even more radiantly than the sun, but then the only reason it shines brighter is because the sun is farther away."

Luna sat in a mound of grass by the waterside after a few hours of fishing for plimpies. Standing in the riverbed, she would only pull them from the water long enough to examine them for injuries, and upon finding them unharmed, she would place them back on the mud near her toes. Now though, they were chilled in the wispy night air, stretched toward the sky with her heels on the ground. Reclining onto the filamentous grass, she straightened the Spectrespecs on her nose. Fireflies zoomed in the sky; they were disguised as stars, but Luna wasn't fooled. Stars weren't so fluttery, even when they moved. Their motions were smooth, like a flame spreading from the fingertip of a heliopath along a tree trunk.

Sometimes the stars twinkled; the work of her mother, Luna had deduced. She had to communicate somehow, didn't she?

The buzzing, however, was the work of no beast apart from the wrackspurts. Overhead, a cluster of people on brooms seemed to be tossing knobbly potatoes at one another in a crude attempt at Quidditch, colorful blurs with an audience of only one. They didn't even realize she sat below.

"FOUL!" cried one red girl that was emitting white sparks of fury.

"It wasn't!" argued a deeper voice, another red figure, that was throwing off belligerent green rays.

"Take the fowl shot, Ginny," replied another voice, this one radiating pale yellow.

Their argument was drowned out by the wrackspurts buzzing about their head, permeating Luna' consciousness. She couldn't let them inside her head. Each wrackspurt buzzed about the Weasley's game like the flames encasing the core source of a heliopath. From behind her, a man surrounded by multicolored puffs called out to her.

"Luna," Xenophilius waved his hand in such a way to call him to her. "It's time to go, Luna," his saucer eyes were matched by a growing smile. "We musn't forget these," he held up his hands. He grasped two pails made from Leprechuan's gold to collect the dung for the gardens. The manure only held its properties until sunrise, and it was imperative to use it quickly.

Skipping ahead of her father, Luna's filamentous mane shook out behind her, hindered only behind her ears by the Spectrespecs. Xenophilius followed closely behind her, restraining her by the shoulder when they reached a clearing far from the Weasley's game. The pair stowed the buckets beneath the wiry leaves of the tall tuberspurt bushes. The craters of the moon refracted iridescent light like a kaleidoscope. Luna flipped the owlish glasses to sit atop her head, immediately noticing the dimming of the world behind her and illustrious colors gone from the moons partly eclipsed by her pupils, dilated from darkness. Even so, her eyes were expectant. Without the effect of the Spectrespecs, they were still beautiful.

Four of them emerged into the tall grass of the clearing.

Four of them wore saucer eyes and hair with a phosphorescent effect. Each creature, though ugly to many eyes, attracted Luna's protuberant gaze. Xenophilius peered at the creatures, remarking on their stature to his daughter. Each stood like a werewolf but entranced and benevolent as a man hypnotized by Veela, hunched from their spines, convex like their own marble eyes and magnifying the moonlight with fur that reflected pure opalescence. The calves stood balanced on clubbed feet, much like those of Quintapeds, and sniffing the autumn air, cool enough to burn one's nostrils given the lateness in the season.

"The dance they do has been known to be similar to that of the blibbering humdingers," Xenophilius noted so quietly that his voice could have very well been a swift and abrupt breeze.

Eight eyes were fixed upon the moon, waiting for the moment that it reached its apex. Sensing the closeness of vertex, the mooncalves straightened themselves like house elves with their forelegs poised below their throats. In a matter of moments, synchronized, the four began to thrash their legs violently and sway from side to side.

Exuding a sense of organized madness, they dragged their feet into complex arrangements, stopping to spin on a single foot as ballerinas fixed to their music boxes did. "This dance has been known to bring good to marriages," Xenophilius remarked.

"I should learn, though I don't much like dancing," Luna answered in a low voice. "I hear Ron and Ginny's brother is getting married. The Weasleys are very kind. Their brother would deserve good luck; maybe I could go to their wedding and do it there."

Xenophilius smiled in reflection of his daughter's. "Pay close attention, Luna, if you'd like to learn from them."

She nodded solemnly and unblinking at the hopping beasts.

They slowed only when the intricate patterns of their movement were worn into the grass and ten silver eyes shown from the darkness between the adjacent trees. The females were as shy as their counterparts, lurking in the shadows until the dancing had trickled to a silent stop. For a moment, there was a pause, as if a powerful wizard had used a silencing charm upon all creatures within the vicinity. Luna unconsciously allowed her hand to drift to the base of her jawbone, feeling to see that her heart was still beating properly.

When the five females emerged, they galloped in such a way that they feet seemed to be above the surface of the grass, pirouetting in mid air before dashing into the trees with four males at their curved ankles, following them to their dens. Nearing two hours has passed since the mating ritual of the Mooncalves had begun, leaving silver remnants of their presence for the Lovegood's garden.

Enthusiastically, Luna moved forward with her pale of Leprechauns gold, doe eyes as innocent as those of the mooncalves behind the trees. Like the calves, she was entranced.


End file.
